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It crosses I-35, twice. It's not a perfect substitute for I-35 because it doesn't parallel it; the "Red Line" (optimistically named to be forward-compatible with future dreams of having a second color too...) connects downtown to the NW, whereas I-35 is still required for anyone connecting to N, NE, S, or SE. If you want to use rail to skip (most) southbound I-35 traffic you have to divert 3 miles west to the Howard Park&Ride first.
2.5M, if you include the whole metro area. And the metro area is very affected by these decisions; a ton of I-35 traffic is commuting from Pflugerville or Round Rock, and the Red Line goes through Cedar Park and Leander. $7,500 per resident goes down to $3,000 per metro resident.
A lot of the people impacted don't live in the area - if you want to go between Dallas/Ft-Worth (6.5M people) and San Antonio (2.5M), you either take a toll loop (expensive for car drivers, speed limits too high for many truck drivers, miles of extra distance) or you slog through I-35. The relative amount of impact is surprisingly small, though, with something like 85% of I-35 traffic from within the metro area.
The plans I've seen are divided into an 8 mile stretch in the center of the city (the expensive part), 8 in the south, 11.5 in the north. That's almost the entire North-South length of the city! And because Austin's historical philosophy toward East-West arterials has been "What's an East-West arterial?", a lot of travel which isn't really North/South as the crow flies gets fed into I-35 for a congested stretch anyway.
I also wouldn't chalk the whole cost up to "cars are heavily subsidized". The expensive new lanes are slated to be HOV-only, in part to make buses more attractive by no longer forcing them to sit in traffic with single-occupancy commuters. Some of the new features are things like decks and pedestrian bridges, connections between bike paths, etc.
On the other hand, I wouldn't bet on $7.5M being the whole cost or on everything planned being a completed benefit. The $7.1B "Project Connect" expansions to public transit (which you might interpret as "non-car-users are heavily subsidized", to be fair?) have been downscaled to a useless shadow of what was originally promised to voters.
Yes, it's not nearby for most of its length, and even the closest stops to where it crosses aren't very close to the highway (except for the very last one, I think).
That definition requires you to go halfway to San Antonio: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Austin
It may stretch along a large distance, but it's still a small portion of the total area--or road mileage, but those are roughly proportional.
Also, if you're going to use the whole Metro area for population to split the cost of a road, you should then also use the whole metro area for the number of roads that have to be paid for.
It will still be a slog, that's the whole point of induced demand! Those other cities, as I've pointed out in this thread, have much better loops. If your primary concern is thru traffic, then look at the loops on the edge of the city.
That's an improvement; we'll see if it turns out that way.
Depends on the details. Probably yes, in practice, but it is possible to have transit pay for itself--Japan, most notably, has private train lines, and NYC used to have private subways. But if you're going to subsidize one form of transportation, transit has fewer externalities and higher capacity.
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